Courage to Be Happy

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We spend our lives striving, reaching, doing. We do everything we can to be better, more productive, more successful. We bust our tails to make life better for our families, where better means more money, less worry, more stuff.

And the search for better begins to consume us. We spend more and more time forcing our dreams, trying harder and harder to get there–wherever there is–faster and faster. We spend more and more time away from the people who love us, getting more and more exhausted, chasing our tails in faster and faster circles, thinking if I can just… catch… it… everything will be OK.

We know we’re running ourselves ragged, but we figure we can make it right later. Because right now, there are bills to pay, debts to get rid of, appliances to replace. How can we stop when there’s so much still undone? When the dream is still right there, just out of reach, ready to fall if we can just force ourselves to grab it?

Then it all comes to a screeching halt. We look around and realize it isn’t enough. It will never be enough. Because happiness, contentment, satisfaction–there’s no place in the plan for those. They’re supposed to spring fully formed into our lives when we get there. There’s been no time for fluffy stuff while we were busy forcing the dream.

And for a day, or a week, or an hour, life falls silent. The only sound is the thudding of our heartbeat in our ears. And finally, we make our decision.

My biggest failure is constantly demanding more. I’ve forgotten to be happy with the life I have. Which, as it turns out, is a pretty good one: my wife and I love each other, our kids are shaping up well, we have enough money most of the time, the cars run well.

So it’s time to take a terrifying step: I’m learning to be happy. And it scares the stuffing out of me. How will I know the difference between happiness and complacency? How can I be satisfied with my life and still work to make it better? How do I keep from waking up one day and realizing I’ve accomplished nothing with the years I spent being happy?

I don’t know the answers. But it’s time to find out. One day at a time. One contented, courageous, joyful day at a time. And the good news is: I’ve got some great teammates to help me.

Have you learned how to be happy? How do you do it?

Scott

The Courage to Dream

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You can’t have a blog about courage and ignore Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few people in recent history–or ever, for that matter–have better exemplified the power of courage to change the world. So today, on the eve of the day our nation sets aside to remember him, let’s look at Dr. King.

Physical courage isn’t something I usually talk about here, because there are a hundred websites out there praising warriors and athletes and ordinary heroes. But a black man didn’t stand up for equality in Alabama in the 1950s without plenty of physical courage. Black men and women who stood for equality in those days faced dogs, and fire hoses, and clubs, and worse.

But hundreds of them had the physical courage to face dogs and fire hoses and clubs and worse. We remember the names of only a few of them, and the words of fewer still.

It was moral courage that made Dr. King stand out from the rest–the courage to keep to his chosen course even when the obstacles seemed insurmountable. His moral courage stood on two pillars: first, that blacks and whites (and everybody else) are equal and should be treated as equals; and second, that true equality could only be attained through non-violent means. He stood by those pillars, even as clubs and dogs sent his friends to the hospital, even as some of his allies rejected peaceful protest and turned to violence themselves.

He stood atop those pillars almost fifty years ago as he shared his dream with the nation. The dream is what most of us remember him for. Even folks who have never heard of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, or the march from Selma to Montgomery, recognize these words:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

It wasn’t a new dream. Dr. King was by far not the first person to dream it. But he had the courage to speak the words, to stand before thousands of people, to say nothing of TV cameras and radio microphones, and say: this is who I am. This is what I believe.

He offered no detailed plan, no timeline with milestones and success metrics, no comprehensive eighteen-point proposal. Just a dream. And through his eyes, through his words, through his courage, we see the dream, too.

I don’t know whether Dr. King would think we’ve realized his dream yet or not. But we’re a good deal closer than we were fifty years ago. And thanks to his courage, we get closer day by day.

What’s your dream? If you could stand before the world and announce who you are and what you believe, what would you say?

My name is Scott. I believe we can make a better world by making ourselves better, and I believe we do that by living with courage.

Your turn.

I’m Sorry

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An apology requires very little courage, especially one that’s been wordsmithed and lawyered into a statement that means nothing at all except “don’t sue me.” I hope that’s not what I’m creating here.

Yesterday, I posted something hurtful to my wife, the one person in all the world I least want to hurt. It was a careless hurt, not intentional–but a bullet hurts whether it was aimed or not. I have removed the post and all the links I know of that pointed to it. My wife and I will sort the rest out between us.

When you try to live with courage, sometimes you make the wrong choice. A coward tries to sweep his mistake under the rug and avoid the consequences of his poor choice. I choose not to be a coward today.

I’m sorry, Beautiful. I love you.

Scott

DUDYE » Design Counts and 11 Other Lessons From Steve Jobs

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DUDYE » Design Counts and 11 Other Lessons From Steve Jobs.

This is a fantastic video from a fantastic speaker. If you’re not familiar with Guy Kawasaki, he’s the self-described “former chief evangelist” of Apple, now a multi-bazillion-published author and speaker who inspires entrepreneurs to enchant customers. His most recent book is called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, an amazing nuts-and-bolts how-to book for self-publishers.

He gave this speech in October, 2011, the day after Steve Jobs died. It’s a long presentation, almost an hour, but it’s worth watching. In a nutshell, here are the 12 counter-intuitive lessons Guy learned from Steve Jobs:

1. “Experts” are clueless. If it’s never been done before, experts will tell you it can’t be done. The leader’s job is to show them it’s possible.

2. Customers cannot tell you what they need. Ask your customers what they need, and they’ll tell you it’s a bigger, better, faster [whatever they have now]. The leader’s job is to show us what’s possible and let us decide we need it.

3. Biggest challenges beget the best work. You don’t get your team’s best by demanding incremental improvements. It’s the new stuff, the stuff you’re not sure you can do but are willing to go down in flames rather than let it pass you by, that inspires.

4. Design counts. If you’re making the same thing as everybody else, you’re competing on price. If you make it different–more beautiful, or more functional, or smaller, or entirely new, you can set the rules of the game.

5. Big graphics. Big font. Presentations are about the information being presented, not the slides. If your audience is busy reading your slides instead of listening to you, you’ve lost them.

6. Jump curves, not better sameness. Don’t focus on doing it ten percent better. Focus on doing it ten times better.

7. “Work” or “doesn’t work” is all that matters. You can’t sell a product that doesn’t work. No matter how beautiful or revolutionary it is.

8. “Value” is different from “price.” A big challenge, beautifully designed, that jumps the curve is a better value than an incremental improvement–even at a higher price.

9. A players hire A players. If you want to succeed, hire people who are better than you at the things you’re hiring them for.

10. Real CEOs demo. Demonstrate your own products–don’t leave it up to your technology or marketing guy. Take the risk yourself.

11. Real entrepreneurs ship. Produce something that works and get it out there. Don’t spend so much time tweaking it that you never get to the market. Remember David Wong’s Cracked article?

12. Some things need to be believed to be seen. No, that’s not a careless error. The true revolutionary changes–the things we don’t know we need until we have them–would never exist if brave visionaries didn’t believe in them first.

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, and not all of it will be positive. But the man was a visionary, and he had courage. Guy Kawasaki is carrying on his legacy.

Happy New Year!
Scott

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person | Cracked.com

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6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person | Cracked.com
(strong language warning, by the way)

I don’t normally look to Cracked for advice on self-improvement. But this article by David Wong struck a chord with me. His overarching position is this:

Intentions don’t matter. Being a great guy doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you do to serve others.

That doesn’t mean you have to succeed at everything you do. It doesn’t mean you have to be first all the time. But it does mean you have to take action, get up off your couch and make something happen.

Old school Christians have a blunter way of putting it:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Mothers understand this concept instinctively; fathers often have to learn it. When your baby is hungry, she doesn’t care about what you mean to do. She doesn’t care what a great guy you are. All she cares about is her empty tummy. You fill her tummy or you don’t. You change her diaper when it’s dirty or you don’t. You hold her and rock her back to sleep when a bad dream wakes her, or you don’t. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, or how much work you have to get done, or how much formula you spilled making the bottle. You either fill her tummy, or you don’t.

I got it when I became a father. But it was years before I figured out the same thing was true in the rest of my life. Boss needs a presentation on penguin camouflage? It’s either on his desk when he needs it, or it isn’t. Wife needs help with the laundry? It’s either cleaned, dried, folded, and put away, or it isn’t. Brother has a birthday? I either call him or I don’t. It doesn’t matter what a good guy I think I am, or what I intend to do, or how much life gets in the way. All that matters is: did I get it done?

I finally got this about three years ago. I’m still learning how to apply it in my life, and I’ll keep learning. But guess what? In the last three years, I have advanced at my job, improved my family life tremendously, and grown significantly in the respect I receive from others (and from myself). And next month, I’ll be self-publishing a book. The first of many. All because I finally figured out that it’s more important to get up and accomplish something than it is to be a great guy.

There’s not a lot of risk in just being a great guy. Risk is what happens when you get up off the couch and go do something. Because you might succeed, and you might fall flat on your butt. But I’ve learned it’s better to fall on my butt than never to get up off of it.

What are you waiting for? Go make something happen!
Scott

I Choose Excellence, or Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

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When I was a young man (and pretty much anti-everything), I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions because they were stupid and cheesy and not cool enough for me.

I n my late twenties and early thirties, I made the same resolutions everybody makes: lose weight, get a new job, make more money, go to church, get active, be a better husband or father or soldier or leader or employee. But I didn’t write them down, didn’t come up with a plan to achieve them, and didn’t tell anybody what they were. You know, just in case life happened.

And I got older, and fatter, and less active, and more cynical, and more afraid, and more ashamed because I couldn’t even keep the promises I made to myself.

Then, in 2009, with my marriage at risk and my self-worth at an all-time low, I attended a training course that helped me get my head back on straight, helped my wife and me to grow closer again, and–maybe most important–helped me put my goals in perspective.

I don’t think I reached a single one of the goals I set for myself in that course. But I made progress, and I was a better man a year later. And I started to realize the power of goals.

See, goals are different from resolutions. For all the power of the word–I resolve is a powerful statement–we treat resolutions as casual actions to be taken if we can find the time. And it’s a rare one who can find the time for anything.

But a goal is specific: I can plan for it and push myself beyond my comfort zone to pursue it. I don’t have to find the time, because I make the time. It becomes a priority.

And when we make something a priority, when we’re willing to push ourselves to accomplish it, we can’t help but grow. We get better, even if we don’t get there.

I didn’t reach any of my goals again this year. Run a marathon? Nope, but I ran sixteen miles in October before plantar fasciitis forced me to take a break. So that one slips to 2013. Publish my book? Not quite–I’m sending it out by the end of January. Take my wife on thirty dates? Not even close, but I’ve gotten better at giving her my attention. I’ve pursued excellence. I’m a better man today than I was on January first. And isn’t that really the point of resolutions?

So what does this have to do with courage? Simple. Courage is action in the face of fear. It’s scary to expose ourselves to failure–so to deliberately do so is by its nature a courageous act. Any act that stretches us, makes us better, is born from courage.

I’ll be creating a page here to post my goals for 2013, and I’ll be tracking my progress there. Feel free to hold me accountable–and post yours as well, so I can return the favor!

Go make it a great day!
Scott

Tony Kushner Explains Emancipation « Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

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Tony Kushner Explains Emancipation « Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

If you’re into the Civil War, you can do a lot worse than Andy Hall’s Dead Confederates blog. Today’s post is on the movie Lincoln, which I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t seen yet. Hall quotes the movie at length, recounting a scene in which Lincoln explains why he has to push the Thirteenth Amendment now instead of waiting for the next congress.

I find the conversation reveals Lincoln’s personality, and his governing philosophy, very well: he did what he figured was right for the nation, without worrying about focus groups or polls or whether anybody agreed with him–or, in some cases, whether what he was doing was strictly legal.

The echoes of his approach come down to us today–if you believe what he did was right for the nation, you’re inclined to believe he was the best president we’ve ever had. If not, you’re inclined to call him a tyrant.

It’s a degree of political courage we don’t see today, and our country is weaker for it. When’s the last time you saw an elected official take a position without sending out an opinion poll first?

That’s the difference between taking a stand and taking a position. When you take a position, you’ve weighed the facts and figures and tried to guess which side of the issue will be most advantageous to you or to your constituency. You could as easily have taken the other side. A position carries little risk and requires little courage.

When you take a stand, though, you announce to the world: this is what I believe to be right. That takes courage. And when you show courage, you guarantee people will notice you–but you can’t guarantee that what they notice will be what you mean them to, or that they’ll like what they see. You might lose friends. You might lose fans. You might lose your bid for re-election. Or some jackass might sneak up behind you in a theater and put a bullet in your head.

Lincoln knew the risks and did what he thought was right. From what I know of him, I imagine he would have considered it a fair trade.

Where have you taken a stand?

Scott

 

The Only Way Out…Is Through

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I received this quote from Martha Beck in my email today, from her book Steering By Starlight:

The only way to the Place beyond Fear is to do the thing you fear most. This is how to surrender to your best destiny.

In other words: the only way out of our prison of fear…is through the fear. We can’t go around it, we can’t go back in time, and sitting still is no good.

I should restate that: sitting still is no good if we’re interested in growing. If all we want is to stay where we are, do the same thing day after day, never stretch, never grow, never experience anything new–sitting still is just fine.

Plenty of us do exactly that. We follow the road until we think we see the monster, then we go back to the last place we know was safe. And we stay there. A woman gets burned by a man with a mustache, so she stops dating men with mustaches. A man loses his shirt in the stock market, so he never buys another share of stock. The man who’s afraid of heights never goes to high places.

I’ve slid out in the rain a few times, so I don’t like driving my truck when it’s raining. Makes me white-knuckle tense when I have to do it. But the last time I slid out I was driving on old tires, and my tires are pretty good now. Maybe I’m being overcautious. Or maybe just responsible.

And there’s the word that gets us stuck: responsible. It’s the right thing to do, we say. Anything else is too risky. So we get that job we’re not excited about and stay there for twenty years.

And we spend twenty years dying inside, wishing we were somewhere else, until we forget how to dream. Then we get angry at the woman who made her dream happen. How lucky she is, we say. How irresponsible. We could have done that, but we were too busy working.

And we were working. Working hard. But so was she, and she did something we didn’t: she saw the monster, stepped back to take a breath–drew her sword and attacked. She cut the monster’s head off and hung it from her saddle. And that made all the difference.

Sometimes responsible is the right choice. But sometimes it’s just another name for afraid.

This site is part of defeating my monsters–not the ones that keep me from driving in the rain, but the ones that keep me from chasing my great big irresponsible dream. Another part is publishing my first book in January. After all, everybody knows historical novelists don’t make any money; just ask Bernard Cornwell or Diana Gabaldon or James Clavell or James Michener.

So–what are your monsters keeping you from? And are you willing to go through them to get to it?

It’s a question worth asking yourself.

Go make it a great day!
Scott

The Opposite of Courage, Part 2

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We’ve spent the last few days talking about Newtown.

About grief, and tragedy, and twenty beautiful, innocent children murdered right before Christmas, and about the young man–barely more than a child himself–who stood in a first grade classroom and systematically shot first their teacher, then one child after another, pumping bullet after bullet into each one until he or she stopped moving.

We’ve talked about banning guns, and locking down schools, and posting armed guards, and even arming teachers.

It was a horrific act, and it’s left us stunned and gasping for breath. We feel the need to do something. But as a nation, we can’t figure out what.

Because it isn’t a problem we can deal with as a nation.

A nation must safeguard its citizens, it’s true. But a nation’s methods are blunt and inefficient, and the cost of protecting ourselves on a national level is more than we can afford to pay. It’s not just more gun laws and more metal detectors and more security guards; it’s walls, curfews, a nationwide lockdown. And even then somebody would probably get through. Because walls and curfews and lockdowns don’t stop people determined to breach them. Just ask anybody who lived in Berlin in the 20th century. Or Tel Aviv today. Or Boston in 1775.

A young man intent on forcing his pain on others will find a way to do it. We can’t stop him with the tools available to a nation.

How, then?

The good news: we stop him with the tools available to us as individuals. With courage, and accountability, and love. It’s up to you and me

The bad news: we stop him with the tools available to us as individuals. With courage, and accountability, and love. It’s up to you and me.

The other bad news: we can’t stop him after he’s decided to do something horrific. We have to do it before he makes that decision. Years before.

We do it by showing him his hopelessness isn’t real. We show him he, and only he, is in control of his life. We make him work for what he wants, and we teach him he can’t get it by hurting others. We teach him to have the courage to take accountability for his actions and to love his neighbor.

And how do we do that? We show him what it’s like to live with courage: we take accountability for our own actions, and we love our neighbors, and our families, and him. We don’t blame the government, or the rich, or the poor, or the economy when things go wrong. We pick ourselves up and get to work. We choose the right way even when it’s the harder way.

Because when you live your life with courage, there’s no room for hopelessness. And hopelessness is the real opposite of courage.

Go show him how to live with courage. He’ll probably never thank you for it. Then again, one of these days, he just might.

Scott

TED-Ed | What makes a hero? – Matthew Winkler

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The hero’s journey is timeless and universal, and each one of us has the power to live it in our daily lives. All we have to do is enter the cave, where the thing we fear lives. In fact, if we mean to live with courage, entering the cave is the only thing we can do.

I’m a big fan of TED. This won’t be the last time I post a link to one of their videos.

TED-Ed | What makes a hero? – Matthew Winkler.

Scott